MARK ELLIS: My Insipiration for MERLIN AT WAR

Mark
Ellisis a thriller writer and a former barrister and
entrepreneur. He grew up in Swansea, under the shadow of his parents’ experience
of the Second World War. His father served in the wartime navy and his mother
witnessed the bombardment of Swansea in 1941. He is a member of the Crime
Writers’ Association. He divides his time between homes in London and Oxford.
www.markellisauthor.com @MarkEllis15

Merlin
At War is the third in my series of detective
thrillers set in World War Two London and featuring Scotland Yard detective
Frank Merlin. The war is a period of history which fascinates me, in particular
the detail of life on the Home Front. My father was in the Navy and my mother
was a teenager in South Wales during the war years. Stories of their experiences
first inspired my keen interest in the subject. I learned early that while the
nation was engaged in its epic struggle for survival, ordinary life, in all its
varieties, naturally went on. Conditions may have been difficult but people
lived, loved, married, brought up children, committed crimes, argued about football
and politics, drank, played, smoked, went to the pictures and so on. Later in
life when I took up writing, it seemed to me a great period in which to set a
detective series.

Most
of the inspiration for Merlin’s adventures comes from the historical reading I
do before I start writing. I research intensively the exact timeframe in which
the story takes place. For my first book, Princes Gate, that was January 1940, during
the period known as the Phoney War. For the second it was September 1940, with
the Blitz and Battle of Britain in full flow.

The
new book is set in June 1941, just after the Battle of Crete and just before
Hitler’s invasion of Russia. The story ideas for my books have all emerged
during the research process. In Princes Gate, a story about murder at the
American Embassy was prompted by reading about Joseph Kennedy, the roguish founder
of the Kennedy clan and wartime American Ambassador. A key element of the plot
in Stalin's Gold, the search for Spanish gold stolen en route to Russia during
the Spanish Civil War, followed a discovery in a footnote in an old history
book in Kensington library. The story in Merlin At War revolves around a
letter left by a soldier killed in Crete, espionage and skullduggery amongst De
Gaulle’s Free French, and murky machinations in Vichy France, all plot lines suggested
by historical events.

Now
I am beginning to research Merlin 4, which I plan to set in December 1941,
around the time of Pearl Harbour. To what I glean from the sources I shall add a
little imagination and, hopefully, I'll have my plot!

Merlin at War by Mark Ellis is
out now (Hardback £12.99, London Wall Publishing)